The latest:

Master of Communication:
How an Obscure Galilean Changed the Course of Human History

Two thousand years ago, a carpenter’s son from an insignificant village began teaching in the countryside of a minor Roman province. He wrote nothing. He commanded no army, held no office, controlled no wealth. Yet his words outlasted the Roman Empire and reshaped human civilization. How did he do it?

Master of Communication examines Jesus not through the lens of theology but through the craft of communication. His methods were sophisticated and deliberate: he asked questions that forced listeners to confront uncomfortable truths, told stories that worked on multiple levels simultaneously, and built credibility through authentic action rather than claimed authority. He knew when to speak and when to remain silent, when to comfort and when to challenge.

But here’s the question that animates this book: Were these skills divine gifts, or did Jesus develop them through practice, failure, and growth? The Gospel accounts suggest a communicator who learned from experience—including a spectacular failure in his hometown of Nazareth. If his skills were developed rather than simply bestowed, then they become not just admirable but achievable. That’s what makes studying his methods worth our time.

Available on Amazon: Master of Communication: How an Obscure Galilean Changed the Course of Human History

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First Inning Rules:
How Baseball Became Baseball

Nine balls for a walk. Four strikes for an out. Batters calling their own pitches. The umpire sitting in an easy chair, served the best food and the largest beer. The baseball of the 1870s and 1880s was almost unrecognizable—a chaotic sport where rules varied from city to city, fielders caught balls barehanded, and honor determined close calls.

First Inning Rules tells the story of how that confusion consolidated into the game we know today. Through thirteen essays, the book explores the forgotten rules that shaped America’s pastime: the bound catch (when a ball caught on one bounce was an out), the fair-foul hit (the trick so devastating they had to outlaw it), the decade-long journey from nine balls to four, and the disastrous 1887 experiment with four strikes that produced a .435 batting average.

I’ve watched baseball for eight decades now, from Willie Mays’s legendary catch in 1954 to a World Series night with my son in 2019. This book is my attempt to understand how the men who played and governed early baseball invented the modern game through trial, error, and endless argument. The rules before the rules. The game before the game. The first inning of baseball.

Available on Amazon:

• First Inning Rules: How Baseball Become Baseball

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Friends of Liberty:
The British Allies Who Helped America Win Independence

We know about Lafayette. We remember the French fleet at Yorktown. But there’s a story of the American Revolution that remains largely untold: the British men and women who supported the American cause, often at tremendous personal cost.

Friends of Liberty reveals the transatlantic networks that connected American patriots with their allies across the ocean. John Wilkes, the radical Lord Mayor of London, committed what amounted to treason by helping channel French arms to the Continental Army. Richard Price, a Welsh minister, wrote a pamphlet celebrating American independence that sold 180,000 copies and earned him an invitation to become an American citizen. Catharine Macaulay, England’s first female historian, corresponded with the Founders and visited George Washington at Mount Vernon. These weren’t distant sympathizers—they were active participants who risked reputation, career, and sometimes their lives.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, Friends of Liberty recovers these forgotten allies and the remarkable networks of correspondence, smuggling, and political resistance that helped make the Revolution possible. Their story reminds us that the cause of liberty has always crossed borders.

Available on Amazon:

• Friends of Liberty: The British Allies Who Helped America Win Independence

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All the Good You Can Do

An Introduction to John Wesley and the Wesleyan Vision

By Jim Stovall

John Wesley never intended to start a new denomination. Yet his life and work sparked a movement that changed Christianity—and continues to shape it nearly three centuries later.

In All the Good You Can Do, journalist and historian Jim Stovall introduces readers to John Wesley the person, Wesleyanism the theology, and the global Wesleyan family that still lives out his vision of “practical divinity”—faith that transforms both individuals and society.

From the fires of Epworth Rectory to the fields of Bristol, Wesley’s journey shows how grace awakens, justifies, sanctifies, and sends believers into the world to do good. Stovall traces that journey with clarity and depth, explaining the great themes of Wesleyan thought:

• Grace for all — God’s love reaches every person, everywhere.

• Faith that works by love — personal holiness joined with social action.

• The means of grace — practical disciplines that open lives to divine power.

• Christian perfection — not sinless pride, but perfect love for God and neighbor.

Written in accessible prose and rooted in solid scholarship, All the Good You Can Do offers both newcomers and lifelong Methodists a fresh understanding of why Wesley still matters today—and how his vision calls us to “do all the good we can, by all the means we can, in all the ways we can.”

A clear, inspiring guide to the faith that formed a movement—and still transforms lives.

More information on this page on JPROF.

Available on Amazon.

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The Deptford Confession

Available now on Amazon.

London, 1887. The Empire’s greatest threat comes from within.

As Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee approaches, American intelligence officers Sophie Baumann and Meade Meadows stumble upon a conspiracy that could reshape the world: a cabal within the British Admiralty plans to provoke war with Spain through a staged attack in the Caribbean.

The plot is sophisticated and deadly. A stolen Spanish warship. British officers posing as the enemy. An American diplomat’s money funding it all. And the conspiracy’s true goal isn’t just war—it’s regime change in London. . . .

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF. 

Reader’s Guide to The Deptford Confession

Available now on Amazon.

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The Dissenting South

Southern Opposition to the Confederacy Before and During the Civil War

For generations, Americans have been told that the South stood united during the Civil War. The image of a defiant, unanimous Confederacy has endured for more than a century—a myth born in defeat and sustained by those who sought to reshape memory.

The Dissenting South: Southern Opposition to the Confederacy Before and During the Civil War tells the other story—the story of the Southerners who refused to follow the Confederacy into rebellion. Across the region, men and women resisted secession, upheld the Union, and paid a steep price for their loyalty.

From Tennessee senator Andrew Johnson, who stood alone in Congress to defend the Union, to the mountain Unionists of Appalachia, the German settlers of Texas Hill Country, and the rebels of Newton Knight’s Free State of Jones, Jim Stovall uncovers the courage of ordinary people who fought back against the tide of disunion. More than 100,000 white Southerners would wear Union blue, fighting for the nation their states abandoned.

This book also exposes how their story was erased. The rise of the Lost Cause myth recast rebellion as righteousness and buried the memory of Southern Unionists beneath marble monuments and romantic lies.

With clarity and conviction, The Dissenting South restores these forgotten voices to the history they helped shape. It is both a work of historical recovery and a reminder that conscience and courage can survive even in the darkest times.

For more information, see that page of JPROF.

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The Frederick Alliance

Available now on Amazon.

Washington D.C., 1884. A murder. A conspiracy. A nation at risk.

When prominent German-American newspaper editor Otto Riesler is found shot dead in an alley, Naval Intelligence Commander Nathan Tower suspects more than a simple robbery. His investigation uncovers the Frederick Alliance—a shadowy organization of brewers and businessmen led by Heinrich Schreiber, a dangerous Prussian immigrant with secrets buried in revolutionary Europe.

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

You can also find a downloadable readers guide for The Frederick Alliance here.

Available now on Amazon.

The Deptford Confession

London, 1887. The Empire’s greatest threat comes from within.

As Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee approaches, American intelligence officers Sophie Baumann and Meade Meadows stumble upon a conspiracy that could reshape the world: a cabal within the British Admiralty plans to provoke war with Spain through a staged attack in the Caribbean.

Available now on Amazon.

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF. 

Reader’s Guide to The Deptford Confession

Nathan Tower: The Early Years

Three Novellas

Available now on Amazon.

Before he became America’s most resourceful spymaster, Nathan Tower had to learn the hard way.

The Nathan Tower novels follow the brilliant operatives who work for Commander Tower in 1880s Washington—Sophie Baumann, Meade Meadows, and others risking their lives in the shadow war that shapes America’s rise as a global power.

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

The Road to Nashville

A Nathan Tower Novella

Available now on Amazon.

February 1862. One lie changed the Civil War.

Lieutenant Nathan Tower thought espionage would be simple—gather intelligence, report back, serve his country. Instead, his first reconnaissance mission nearly gets him hanged before he can order his first drink.

Enter nineteen-year-old Molly McDade, whose sharp eyes spot Tower as a Union spy the moment he stumbles into her Dover Inn. . . .

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

The Krupp Gambit

Available of Amazon

A Nathan Tower novella

Berlin, 1875. In Bismarck’s Germany, everyone is watching everyone else.

Lieutenant Nathan Tower thought he understood espionage. His Civil War intelligence work had trapped thousands of Confederate soldiers through clever deception. Now, as naval attaché in Berlin, he’s building his own network of German sources while growing dangerously close to Elena Volkov, a mysterious Russian émigré with her own secrets.

When Elena introduces him to Greta Hoffmann, a German widow selling Krupp naval specifications to feed her network of anti-German agents, Tower believes he’s struck intelligence gold. . . .

More information is available at this page on JPROF.

Available of Amazon

London Fog

Available now on Amazon.

In Berlin, he was the student. In London, he becomes the master.

Three years ago, Nathan Tower’s first intelligence operation ended in humiliation. Conrad Klein, one of Germany’s most skilled spymasters, effortlessly manipulated the naive American attaché, teaching him brutal lessons about how espionage really works in the capitals of Europe.

Tower learned those lessons well. Too well.

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

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The Civil War You Never Knew

Go to the series page on JPROF.

Unconditional Failure

How Confederate Commanders Lost Fort Donelson: A Study in Military Command and the Myth of Confederate Superiority

Available now on Amazon.

The myth of Confederate military superiority dies hard—but it should have died at Fort Donelson.

In February 1862, 13,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered in what became the largest capitulation in American military history to that point. But this wasn’t a noble defeat against impossible odds. It was an “unconditional failure” of Confederate leadership so complete it bordered on the criminal.

Two generals fled in the night, abandoning their troops to save their own skins. . . .

If you think you know the story of Confederate military leadership, think again.

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

The Unbroken Oath

The Southern Heroes Who Chose the Union

When the Civil War began, every officer in the United States Army faced an agonizing choice: keep the oath they had sworn to the Constitution, or follow their home states into rebellion. We remember the names of those who broke their oaths—Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart—celebrated for generations as heroes. But what about the Southerners who kept their word?

The Unbroken Oath tells the forgotten stories of Southern officers who remained loyal to the United States when their states seceded.

Find out much more on the Unbroken Oath page here on JPROF.

Available on Amazon

The Dissenting South

Southern Opposition to the Confederacy Before and During the Civil War

For more than 150 years, Americans have been told a simple story about the Civil War: that the South rose as one to defend its land, its people, and its way of life.
That story is a myth.

The Dissenting South: Southern Opposition to the Confederacy Before and During the Civil War reveals a very different reality—a South divided against itself. In every Confederate state, men and women refused to go along with secession. They denounced rebellion, defied local authorities, and in many cases fought shoulder to shoulder with Union forces. Their courage was remarkable, their suffering immense, and their memory nearly erased. . . .

For more information, see this page of JPROF.com.

Available on Amazon

Battlelines: Gettysburg

More information at this page of JPROF.

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Spy Story Collection

 

Spy Story Collection: World War I Spies

Available now on Amazon.

Discover the Secret War That Transformed Intelligence Forever

The first two SPY STORY Collections revealed individual heroes and professional networks from America’s Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Now explore World War I intelligence operations that established the foundations of modern espionage, resistance movements, and global communications security.

Nine True Stories of Innovation, Sacrifice, and Global Intelligence:

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

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The Lost Dynasty

How the 1890s Baltimore Orioles Created Modern Baseball

Available now on Amazon.

They went from last place to dynasty in two years. Then they vanished from history—but their revolution changed sports forever.

In 1892, the Baltimore Orioles were the worst team in professional baseball: 46-101, terrible defense, no strategy, empty stands. When manager Ned Hanlon took control, he didn’t just rebuild a team—he revolutionized the entire sport.

Within two years, Hanlon’s Orioles had won the first of three consecutive championships through methods that were unprecedented in professional athletics. They didn’t rely on raw talent or power hitting. Instead, they developed systematic approaches to every aspect of the game: the famous “Baltimore Chop,” coordinated hit-and-run plays, defensive positioning based on analytical preparation, and psychological warfare that intimidated opponents before games even began.

This was the birth of “scientific baseball”—and it changed everything.

Willie Keeler’s precise, situational hitting. John McGraw’s aggressive tactical leadership. Hughie Jennings’s defensive coordination. Together, they proved that intelligence and systematic preparation could overcome any advantage in talent or resources. Their innovations established the foundation for modern professional sports—from defensive shifts and situational strategies to sports analytics and systematic player development. . . .

For more information, go to this book page on JPROF.

Available now on Amazon.

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